Modern Wisdom

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...

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...

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 coun...

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. Expe...

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 habit...

Gurwinder Bhogal is a programmer and a writer. Gurwinder is one of my favourite Twitter follows. He’s written yet another megathread exploring human nature, cognitive biases, mental models, status games, crowd behaviour and social media. It's one of the best things I've read this year, so I just had to bring him on. Expect to learn how bad things can sometimes feel better than good things, why peo...

David Lundberg Kenrick is the Psychology Program Manager at Arizona State University and Douglas Kenrick is a Professor of psychology at Arizona State University. Our brains were designed to exist in a very different environment to the one they find themselves in. Managing modern problems with stone-age operating systems causes us to act in strange, suboptimal, silly ways. Which is why it's so imp...

Peter Zeihan is a geopolitical analyst, author and a speaker. The world is changing faster than ever, and a lot of the countries, dynamics, peace treaties and structures we're familiar with may be about to come to an end. Peter's job consists of him analysing data from geography, demographics, and global politics to understand economic trends and make predictions. And if his predictions are correc...

I hit 450k Subscribers on YouTube!! To celebrate, I asked for questions and got nearly 1000 this time, so here's another 90 minutes of me trying to answer as many as possible. As usual there's some very cool questions in here about my experience on Joe Rogan's podcast, dating advice for young people and my thoughts on masculinity. Expect to learn whether I think Jordan Peterson should debate Andre...

Will MacAskill is a philosopher, ethicist, and one of the originators of the Effective Altruism movement. Humans understand that long term thinking is a good idea, that we need to provide a good place for future generations to live. We try to leave the world better than when we arrived for this very reason. But what about the world in one hundred thousand years? Or 8 billion? If there's trillions...

Max Dickins is a comedian, writer and a mental health advocate. Loneliness is as dangerous as smoking. And men are suffering worse than ever. This is bad for them, it's bad for their partners, it's bad for their employers, their children and society at large. Men are struggling to toe the line between manning up and opening up and many of them are doing neither. Expect to learn what Max learned fr...

Zack Telander is a weightlifter, coach & YouTuber. More serious problems are afoot. The number of men using viagra is at al time highs, BatGirl has been cancelled, Beyonce has become an ableist abuser, a basketball star gets jailed in Russia and TikTokers are wearing blasphemous bikinis. Obviously, me and Zack must fix all of this. Expect to learn how long you can flog a dead franchise before it s...

Colin O'Brady is a 10-time world record breaking explorer and one of the world's best endurance athletes. The things we believe can act like a glass ceiling. It's an imaginary limit that we place on what we can achieve in life because of our age or experience or money or self trust. Colin is a man who has annihilated his way through that glass ceiling and is here to show us what's on the other sid...

Nate Hagens is the Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future. Energy drives our entire world. It keeps our GDPs growing, our cars moving and our hospital's working. If there was a shortage of energy, life would change very dramatically. Nate has spent 20 years researching the state of our current energy reliance and creating an assessment and philosophy for the future. Expect...

Dr Julie Smith is a Clinical Psychologist, online educator and an author. Bad days will come. Stress and burnout and feeling down is always a potential threat. So, it's vital that you understand the right tools to recognise this, deal with it and bring yourself back to a balanced mindset. Expect to learn whether depression is actually caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain, what most peo...

Elizabeth Stokoe is a Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University studying conversation analysis. The discussions we have usually seem to flow seamlessly. That's until you transcribe and scientifically analyse them to show up all the pauses, filler words, mistakes, stutters and half-finished sentences. Then, the fact that we can communicate at all seems to become a miracle. Expect t...

James Smith is an author, podcaster, online trainer and not a life coach. Many men and women no longer see each other as on the same team with a common goal, and instead view them as adversaries who don't play well together. But given that humanity has continued successfully for hundreds of thousands of years, this can't be how it's always been, so why is it now? Expect to learn why James got in t...

I hit 400k Subscribers on YouTube!! To celebrate, I asked for questions and got hundreds and hundreds, so here's another 90 minutes of me trying to answer as many as possible. As always there's some amazingly insightful questions in here about my plans for the future, imposter syndrome worries and advice for young content creators. Expect to learn whether I would have the Liver King on the podcast...

Brett Johnson is referred to by the United States Secret Service as "The Original Internet Godfather", he was the Founder and Leader of Counterfeit Library and Shadow Crew and has been a central figure in the cybercrime world for almost 20 years. Brett has been a lifelong criminal, he was committing crimes from inside the Secret Service's own offices, then after being sent to prison he escaped fro...

Jocko Willink is a retired United States Navy officer in SEAL Team 3, an author and a podcaster. Finding discipline in the modern world is hard. A hyper convenient existence rarely encourages radical responsibility or extreme ownership. Thankfully Jocko has spent an entire life learning how to love discomfort, and also teaching others how to love it too. If discipline equals freedom then Jocko mus...

Tiago Forte is a productivity coach, Founder of Forte Labs and an author. The world has far, far too much information in it. Humans don't do well when they are overwhelmed with incoming signals and yet we can't stop ourselves from wanting to acquire more, interesting insights. Thankfully Tiago has created one of the world's most popular systems to Capture, Organise, Distill and Express pretty much...

To celebrate 500 episodes on Modern Wisdom, I broke down some of my favourite lessons, insights and quotes from the last 4 and a half years. Expect to learn why having no role models can be an advantage, how discipline eats motivation for breakfast, why you should be training for the difficult, why success in pursuit of happiness can be self-defeating, why fame makes you weak, how an obsession wit...

Konstantin Kisin is a podcaster and an author. The West has had a bad run over the last few years with accusations every ism and obia under the sun. Having grown up in the Soviet Union however, Konstantin has a unique perspective on just how bad a nation can be and has some home truths to remind everyone of. Expect to learn whether we should be bothered that Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin are bann...

Roy Baumeister is a social psychologist at the University of Queensland and an author. The social psychology of sexual interactions is fascinating. Sex is more than just a physical act, it has cultural, emotional, spiritual, psychological and social implications, many of which we are unaware of. Thankfully Roy has spent years studying the literature on why people have sex and what's going right an...

Donald Robertson is a stoicism historian, a psychotherapist and an author. Marcus Aurelius has become one of the most quoted and most popular philosophers in history. His meditations have helped millions of people to find solace in hard times and deal with setbacks in life. But which elements of his life and philosophy have been hidden from the public and how many valuable insights are less widely...