Girls you have been expressing your ips about guys for clout on social media for about a year now So if I'm not allowed to make up a hypothetical situation with a hypothetical ten out of ten You are not allowed to rile together your female community to talk about ips James Smith welcome to the show. Hey, it's good to be back. It's been a bit of a long stint since I've been on it feels like I was on a couple months ago, but it's been a year. It's been a long time.
Yeah, what's going on? I'm a different man. Why I'm completely different. Look at this setup first start We were just talking about this offline last time.
I'm embarrassed of the version of myself a year ago Technologically in many ways professionally technologically personally like last time we did this talk I was wearing a broadcaster headset, which at the time I thought was innovative and podcasting I was like I've got my headphones connected now a Sure SM 7B the pinnacle of podcasting microphones about three of a minute right a DSLR Which you know I never fully appreciated the power of podcast clips an hour ago the game has changed Yes, sir. Well you how long have you had in tiktok now? I've only started respecting it as a platform probably six months and you've got how many followers 1.5 million I would have no way I did 580,000 in a week. What was that you?
What did you talk about? There was one video that rebooted off which is subjects I've actually spoken about for years so when I did the video on it kind of real off the song Which is the swimmer's body illusion where I don't ever say this to shit on fitness people But I'd say to people in the video look imagine there's a person who wants to get in shape and they look at different physiques They want to you know idealize and they go are I would be a runner But then I'd probably be a bit skinny and look a bit miserable or I could be a bodybuilder But then it might be a little bit too big and look a bit thick So then they go ask women's I love a swimmer's physique So I'm gonna start swimming then three four months past and they like realize it's an illusion Swimmers don't always look the way they look because they swim because of the way they look similarly to me the people always go Oh, it's right for you your big abroad and that's why you know as pushy play rugby and I was like no I'm big and broad so I play rugby when 50 lads in a year play rugby the big broad dance Have you guys stay on and enjoy it and the people that don't and in the gym people that lift weights the six months and don't build muscle Continue the endeavor and they start picking other sports and there's always that adage that you don't pick a sport It's more peculiar and so many people in the fitness industry there There are people genetically who have a much easier time getting in good shape and maintaining good shape And when they take the top stuff on holiday rather than people going oh your empathetic intelligent you care about people You should be a coach they go wow you're in great shape You should become a PT and that's unfortunately the state of affairs of the fitness industry largely is people on you know People don't look the way of what because what they preach what they preach what they preach because the way they look Mmm. Yeah, so it's a selection effect and the people that come out the other side of the ones that were predisposed to be good in any case I mean, that's one of my friends says that he always wanted to learn to bench in powerlifting from the guy that had long arms I don't want to let a bench from the guy with short arms It's easy for him I want to learn a bench from the guy that had an absolute nightmare in doing it I want to learn to deadlift and squat from the tallest power in the gym reason being well There's another argument here that if you see two candidates that are of equivalent Merit equivalent qualifications equivalent experience and all the rest of it But one of them is really ugly and the other ones really good looking You should hide the really ugly one because that person has had to do all of the things the good looking persons don't and they've had to Well become the fact that they're ugly as well. There's also a people your guilty non guilty verdict isn't affected But the amount of time you get sentenced is affected by how good looking you are So people that good looking so shorter jail sentences So you just got to make sure whoever you hire if you do pick the ugly one that you're not getting locked up So you have a lot of female followers and you've spent many thousands of hours on the gym floor Do you think that it's acceptable for guys to look at girls while they're training?
Well, I suppose if you're gonna show room together to train Yes, but there's it I suppose didn't go on so how long the gazes because I'm not sure of this I'm you've had much not people to me on the podcast But there's probably an objective measure of when an inquisitive gaze becomes a gaze with intent And you know for me I'm someone that when I'm in a room I like to read the room in gym training You know, I'm like, okay cool. If the shoes don't need them cool Yeah, you know someone using wrist straps when they're doing decline bench I'm like I'm trying to figure out my head to do the math. I'm like my grippis is for a decline bench But then sometimes you know, I'm someone that talks to someone in a gym. So If I ever see a woman doing like a hip thrust of significant weight I see someone doing mobility work because I've been in those environments.
I'll have to describe him I'm really impressed with what you're doing here. I don't even tell them I'm a person trainer I'm just like that's really impressive amount of weight. So you do that you do that is just another gym shmo Walking up to other people in the gym despite the fact you're not working Yeah, and I you know for me if I've ever had to go into a shopping center And you know, you have a commencement or a women's floor I feel very uncomfortable in what is the women's area? So if I'm ever shopping my girlfriend and she's actually to get some stuff from here I'm kind of on edge and if someone would just speak to me or someone go hey, you're right here by the way Yeah, good.
Thanks, you know something like that can really put your nerves at ease and for me I suppose it's a bit easier because I'm a PC I can say look if I was court staring this was a professional, you know It's a professional stare. This is like I'm making sure you technically good But I think that you know it's because the gym is perceived in a hostile environment that things like a gaze can be taken the wrong way I suppose context is everything but being a being a man you have to be very You know aware that if you're in a gym environment or a training environment You don't want to make people feel uncomfortable, especially if there's a chance they already feel uncomfortable I agree There was a video that went viral on tick tok would you might have seen about a month and a half ago with a girl wearing booty shorts And taking a top off and filming it and she turned around and called one of the cultures pervert. Did you see that? Yeah, it's annoying with stuff like this because I Appreciate what people are doing and this is have you ever noticed that life at the moment?
You're never sure if someone's filming it like something can happen now because content is king and people So more time than ever on their phones like say someone has like a seizure in a busy shopping center There's a part of me. That's like is this a tick tok and that's a scary realization to be like and you got this bystander effect already as it is like people not really wanting to get involved and It's hard to know things in our setup. So you see a girl do that in the gym where you might go over and be like excuse me You know what's going on here? It's just someone trying to get some virality on tik tok or social media But I think men have an obligation to be polite, you know Shivalry is something that you can barely have a discussion with anymore where you know people all right, okay So because I'm a woman men just gonna object to find me by looking at me That's not really the discussion to be heard if I was to catch a dude staring in the gym.
I probably might hate me. She's trying to train Relax. I get that man. I think both sides are pretty hyper sensitive.
There's definitely an argument to me made as far as I can see that Guys need to understand that girls might feel objectified girls might feel very sensitive about guys looking for too long But that video in particular so this girl in booty shorts and she's taking a long-sleeve top off and there's a sports Right, you're already in like booty shorts. Take it off and there's a sports bar underneath and two guys Thirty yards away in the back of the gym turn in and look if she's taking her literally as she's de-clothing And she turns around and says can I help you or what do you want or something like that? She's zero to a thousand in no time at all and in the same way that guys need to understand that girls don't want to be objectified Girls need to understand that guys are biologically hardwired to look if something like that is happening I mean if a guy took his top off in the middle of the gym some people would turn around and look I was just about to say have you ever heard of a pump cover? No, what's that?
So like a bodybuilders I've done this but I was always quite almost embarrassing So let's say you're in the middle of a stairwork cycle You're pretty small right you get like a stringy bit stringy vessel underneath and say you're eight ten weeks into a cycle You're pretty juicy. So what you do is you put a massive oversized hoodie on and track pants You go into the gym you do your first four five sets on a bench like to the point where you're literally getting so hot and you're just maxing out the reps and underneath You know you're a little bit sweaty you've got a savage pump You feel like your chest and arms are about to explode and then you wait until everyone's in the gym people are away from like the water fountains And you uncover your top because everyone just thought you're just a big dude in a baggy jumper Then they see the swole normus Lord swaldum or there and then you do it so you get the stairs sebum Canadian bodybuilder He's famous for this is that what he takes his pump cover off and everyone's like oh my god It's like a gorilla coming into you know create alpha status But the thing is the male bodybuilding community. They like to sneak in under the radar They don't want the red carpet to be where they walk into the gym They want it for when they take their pump cover off and There are quite a lot of people in that setting who kind of cherish the attention and again like you know I wish there was a bit more dialogue in the gym where if those two guys are staying she could back and I help you and I'm sure the majority of Times guys, but oh sorry, you know, I'm bad. I don't think people are so ill-intended or have such poor intentions as people assume and Yeah, I'm sure a bit of a communication and not going from not to a hundred probably be the smartest option there Yeah, well, I think one of the problems we've got at the moment is that men and women see each other as adversaries And this is one of the most interesting insights I guess around gender dynamics at the moment that men women have somehow been convinced that they're playing on different teams I don't think that men women have been on different teams pretty much ever right Yeah, maybe women didn't have particular access up until recently, but a lot of the oppression when women talk about it comes from women like most slut shaming comes from women most Pro-life rhetoric so anti-abortion like anti-pro-choice rhetoric also comes from women a lot of the Restrictions that are placed on women come from kind of without within their own house as opposed to it being men that are doing that Like men and women have had to exist together in order to be able to get families to work in order to have anything close to a functioning society For almost forever, but now that we want to try and find tribal groups that we can jump into whenever we feel is appropriate This is just another one gender just happens to be another one that people are going to tumble into as well I love that you've brought this topic up because it is such a topic of contention I mean if you were to look at the US political system the left and the right who heavily opposed each other It's almost like they've lost sight that the fact that they're a political party to run the United States of America To lead a democracy and a happy nation into the American dream They've lost all sides of that instead of the left and the right being an upward trajectory to support the political State of the nation they've become internalized to be polarized against each other and they're obviously losing sight of how to run a country They're just trying to beat their opposition.
So to that merit as well with men and women at the moment Let you say it with guys guys do things to impress other guys if I shave my chest and increase the volume of my chest It's because I'm impressed with the guys right. I don't do it to impress women They don't appreciate the amount of effort goes into to have a chest as a man So things like hairline as well guys are the first ones to comment on your hairline on tik tok or whatever like just shave it bro And you're like you're you're allowed to have a receipt in her line. I was in a crochet show a couple weeks ago I was looking around at europeans and I was like 75% of every man I can see here is experiencing some form of hair loss Rather than seeing that's a bad thing. I was like this is more normal than than we kind of realized and I like watching order films where Nicholas cage for decades was a lead actor was Hollywood sex icon with his hairline starting like home of Simpson with three hairs being swept across Bruce Willis when he was doing die hard, right?
And he'd gone 75% bald and he just had a bit around the side. No one cared then So a lot of these standards and beauty standards like you say being upheld by men and the same as women absolutely like You know women are less aggressive than men or especially less physically aggressive So they are more inclined to use verbal communication as a way of being combative with people So yeah, you have that kind of side of things where gossiping like say slut shaming But the thing is as well that sometimes there's a lot of double standards. So this week Uh my friends on the sofa my housemates are made up a game where they go. Okay.
She's a 10 But she shouts your dad's name and she orgasms and like it was funny like so you would just be sat there watching tv And then one of the housemates go she's a 10 but and you're like okay here we go And I put it in a youtube video to break up what was an informative video and people like that's disgusting They're like ours really enjoying that youtube video until I saw that and the reason they comment that as well Is because they're trying to change you if they were truly offended by something they're just leave Right, they're just gonna uh this guy's not for me But they're proactively trying to change you they were calling me a misogynist and all of these things and I go hold on girls You have been expressing your icks about guys for clout on social media for about a year now So if i'm not allowed to make up a hypothetical situation with a hypothetical 10 out of 10 You are not allowed to rile together your female community to talk about icks There was one that went viral on tik tok where she was like I never knew this was my ick But when he gets in the shower and he kicks the water to test the temperature That's my ick if he does that you know when the shower's warming up and you give it like those little toe kicks to check what temperature is And then I was like girls how can you have this double standard where you openly express things that you find explicitly unattractive in men But the second we make up a hypothetical situation and we're oppressive and misogynistic all of these things And i'm like come on like if we're gonna set the standards as that being a conflict between genders then Fucking hell I got featured in a mega viral ick thread about a year and a half ago So my one of my many past lives of being a commercial nail model I'd done some stuff for a nightwear company like lounge wear night time stuff And one of the icks was a man that wears matching top and bottom pajamas So you can imagine like a plaid sort of cross stripe scenario like a What you'd imagine someone in the 1800s would wear without the cap without that sort of long like weird fairs type thing And it was me it was the photo was me the ick was myself and i was like ah Yeah, at least i don't wear it not properly, but uh, yeah, you are right I think one of the reasons that that that seems a little bit more acceptable is that Girls presumed that they can say those things about guys and it's not going to hurt Right that goes a much more how would you say sensitive about that looks and guys are therefore The ick threads aren't real like the she's a ten book that he's a ten book I've seen that put over the top of golden retriever videos Like he's a ten but he dances like this when he's waiting for his food and his golden retriever's doing his silly dance Like I don't think that it's serious But you are right that when the double standards and hypocrisy are what people love to point out at the moment in the world And the reason is that it allows you to have a sense of righteousness moral righteousness Whilst having nothing moral to earn it like you get to point at the failings of somebody else And say this is something that shouldn't happen your morality stands on the shoulders of other people Now one thing that I'm not sure that I would agree with is that people who comment online aren't truly offended I think that for a lot of people that is by mimises by seeing what other people do when they're offended and they say that they're offended They presume that that is the way for them to go about offense that maybe they're going to leave Maybe they're going to unsubscribe or unfollow you but first they're gonna like you know why I mean how many comments do you get that says Absolutely outrageous unfollowed or absolutely outrageous unsubscribed like that happens a lot Yeah, I say to people as well. I was like I always like out them a bit. I'm like fucking on mate This isn't an airport you don't have to announce your departure, but what's uh what's kind of interesting as well with this like kind of Culture that we have now. So I've been devising Kind of a few systems in my mind of why I think this is now passion is something that before probably book two I would be like go find your passion But a lot of people came back to me and they're like what if I haven't found it and I was like well Yeah, it's not something you should find on the horizon.
I realized I didn't really follow my passion when I started doing what I do for work I followed my values and I didn't even know I was following my values a lot of the successful decisions I made almost back soon almost back soon So I became a PT because I just wanted to be happy I thought going to work in shorts and helping people would make me happy and it did and I was like not having to have a boss would make me happy and it did So I followed my values. It was only four years into being a PT that I loved my life that I found passion So so many people are disconnected from their values So many people that they never ever experience passion and a lot of people mistake being good at their job for passion Which is another tragic state professor where they go. Yeah, I like my job, you know, I hit bonuses I hit quite a bit money and then when you're infused with enough money You can use that as a guy's to cover up passion So there are a lot of people out there so disconnected from their values that they never experience passion on the way into a job or during a job It's now been 10 years of a passionless existence that they may be covering with money or they may not be So when they do put on their righteous politically correct hat or they come in from a moral high ground And they express their emotions in such a way they feel something in their belly And not many people are combative not many people fight not many people have a martial art or something they can lean on So they get this fire in the belly of self righteousness and for once they feel passion And I think a lot of people are Inspired to be politically correct and to almost in some respects be a Karen No disrespect to anyone called Karen Because it's the only time in the last few years they've genuinely felt passion and for a lot of them I think it's the only time they've truly felt alive for a very long time and they get hooked on that And when you see these like you see there's a woman who got kicked off a United USA flight for screaming that the guy next to her Wouldn't disclose whether or not he was vaccinated or not And in the end it was a transatlantic flight and she's screaming in the end the pilots like get off the plane And I was like your bags and hold you're flying to the UK You've got you've done everything and this is where you decide you're going to scream and make a big fuss I reckon she was really enjoying it and it's a sad state of affairs that that could be the only time that person's felt fired in the belly for months That's the place that somebody gives themselves a sense of purpose and righteousness is when they're actually able yeah well That that would seem to make sense to me. I think that it's rare that people love anything very much It's quite uncool especially with the UK background US people might not get this quite so much because out here is a more of a collegial Uplifting optimistic blue sky vision type world whereas the UK is very much a tall poppy syndrome if you deviate from the norm People very quickly will point that out and say why are you doing that?
That's fucking shit. That's lame. That's not going to work Especially typically I think if you take an average and uh, there was this interesting bit at the start of Elliot's a ukowski's work Which is about rationality and he said people take the piss out of rationalists that love rationality not because rationality is a weird thing to love But because so few people love anything in the modern world so few people have a genuine passion about anything in particular So when you see someone that does they're an outlier They're such an outlier because most people are just like what is it that you love? What do you love in life beyond family and friends?
Oh, well, uh, you know, I'm a fan of true crime what you love true crime like true crime documentaries That's that's the highest point of fucking existence that you've got true crime or football team Maybe or you know some sort of sport that they support those are the sort of places that people go to and with that vacuum of Meaning and purpose. I think that people do try to fill it with A stance that gives them the simulator of a sense of meaning Was not actually being something that aligns with how they feel like it's very performative. You know that lady that's doing that vaccine thing That's super performative. Yeah, you're completely right and I agree even people like like say with sports teams And what I try and warn a lot of people of is it's completely fighting to love formula one or love a football team and even to some people to love your Partner that much but you can't take every part of currency of happiness and values and passion you have and put it in one thing that isn't a stable investment Look at crypto, right?
Look at the money in crypto. Nothing. Right. I'm not but then again.
We've had this discussion before I'm not an investor at all like it doesn't excite me But some people would have put everything into that I didn't come bottom out and some of my friends They're their universe circles around the black hole, which is their relationship And the relationship goes up everything I say look if that relationship doesn't work out You're left with nothing because you put your whole life into that same football teams and some people probably get depressed when the team gets relegated But this is why again, I love martial arts and there's a black belt I saw a speech that he made when he got his black belt and he said, you know, I'll lose friends I'll lose family my job my money all of these things can be taken away from me But jiu-jitsu can never be taken away from me like the camaraderie the brotherhood the accomplishments He's like he held his black belt. He was like wherever I go in the world whatever happens to me I still have this and I was like that's that's really compelling. It was pretty emotional to hear it as well What do you think that symbolizes? What does him holding up a black belt symbolize?
I quite like the fact that it's a you're you're almost stuck in a tenure of never-ending development within a specific field But not just the field of philosophy that you can join your own or something where you can read books and become right and hold it Become the expert of the Stoics with jiu-jitsu. It's it's something you can't do on your own You could have the best gym the best black belt, but if he's in a room on his own you can't do the sport There's camaraderie. There's brotherhood. There's teaching people there's educating people There's being a mentor to people there's being an inspiring figure to people There's this massive hierarchy, you know, if you look at like the military You've had generals and captains and you know all of this lieutenants and sergeants I believe men crave this hierarchy between them where you know tribes for hundreds of thousands of years You've earned your stripes and now you can have that in a martial arts setting where people are safe They don't have to go to war.
They don't have to leave their families for periods of time It's nice to go in and know who's above you know who's below you know who's new advice do and who can go to for advice And it's a very powerful feeling to know that and it's a bizarre experience almost where I'll take my martial arts Give with me somewhere across the world and when I put on my belt I have a respect from someone without ever even talking to them And it's something whenever you interview anyone that does jiu-jitsu. There was a little spark that little this person It's gonna fight me, but he's also gonna care about me He's also got respect for the work I've been and I've got the respect for him And I think there are a lot of little parts of the human psyche that jiu-jitsu caters for which modern day society doesn't What is one of the problems that in jiu-jitsu your status that you achieve is directly proportional to the amount of work that you put in I know you can go to Shitty gems where maybe you'll be given a purple belt before you perhaps should be and then that's a less respected gym or whatever when you go Train globally and there's certainly harder gyms as well right or ones that are seen with more prestige But generally your work put in is Directly related to the belt that you carry around your waist So what you're what you're showing with the belt isn't the belt what you're showing with the belt is all the years that you've spent doing it One of the problems that you have at the moment with regards to fame is that fame has become decoupled from things that use to be worthy of making people famous So our mutual friend Adam collards just gonna live island for the second time and the island is basically the hunger games for fame You get picked out of obscurity You get thrown at the top of a pile you come out with a million dollar million pounds pretty little thing contract and like several million Instagram followers and they were that's the next five years of your life Well, you're the same person that you were six weeks ago Whitney 21 year old hairdresser from fucking Bristol or wherever you are like nothing has changed So what people have done now is they've seen the fact that obligation free status is available You can just hope to be plucked out of obscurity remember that guy on tick tock who was skateboarding down the street drinking Was it cranberry juice and listening to it a particular song and the song went to number one and now He's got this very different sort of life because you skateboarding down the street drinking cranberry juice when someone's ability I went society begins to reward With fame actions that don't deserve it people are going to immediately think that the way to get fame is no longer to do the hard things Consistently over a long period of time and very high quality What they're going to see is I need to be in the right place at the right time and hope that I get plucked out of obscurity and throw it at the top of the tree It's a one of the last remaining true meritocracies. Well, I think I've got that word right. You're yeah, thank god for that And it's great that nothing's gonna influence that and I really enjoy the fact that I started to get to before I had a blue tick before I had a Fucking anything notable and nothing's changed and I love that it doesn't matter who I am I still line up in my order We still wipe the mats together, you know the only time that I ever try and assert status is when it's time to clean the mats And I'm there.
I'm like listen mate. I don't know your name But that's not how you wipe the mats I've ringworm twice this year and you don't know what it's like I'm gonna go for a ringworm where you can't touch them You're laying in bed and you get a bit skin skin. I'm like get off me I've got ringworm so it's uh, it's one of those times where it's really truly amazing things go in and Another thing as well is that you can access some of the best athletes in the world So when I came to Austin last time I saw you I'm still recovering from that hangover I was training literally with the David Beckham's the Christiano Ronaldo's of the world and I went into the gym had to be like a little form And our mutual friends act as act. I went to his gym and he's like broke comp correct man Gotta come to my gym.
I was like, yes, we so I'd already trained in the morning I go there for lunch and uh, it was war and some of the guys in there I was like, oh my god, that's the tacky brothers They're sick. Oh my god. That's that Cody still was like he's sick And um even their culture was very different to where I've been before but they were super welcoming none of them knew what I did for work No one really gave a shit. They were very respectful when we rolled they actually all of them lowered their level to me So we could have fun rolls they could have smashed me they could wipe the floor of me but instead smile on the face most And didn't have their gum shields in and it was such a like a great opportunity to train some of the best I'm intimidated right I can talk in front of thousands of people that's like doing a TED talk no sweat patches training with these guys I thought you know and I think that's one of the things as well that I love about the sport I put a clip up a couple of weeks ago about feminist called Louise perry explaining that while some girls think that choking is a passionate sign of love Others are misinterpreting it and it's not actually that and that girls should stop showing their bruises on tiktok as a badge of honor What were you thought sir?
Yeah, I commented on this. I don't think one woman can objectively hold up in opinion for all women same way that you know that that's not allowed Respect to agendas. No one can say this is my opinion on something therefore. It's all of your opinions I didn't like the objective on her when she said that I do think that you know any bruises on the neck between genders It's probably a tell-tale sign that you're being a bit too rough.
You know, it's probably what bruises I don't ever advocate any striking or violence between people But I think that she'd probably be better off doing a survey monkey and asking women of the world a good large population Why it is they may like choking and I mean it's not women that just like choking I think if you look at a six-year-old death there's a lot of men in there as well and um, yeah, do you know what it's crazy that Straight away when you use the word feminist it puts everyone on edge including women because what was a true passion and passionate stance And I'm sure feminists over across history have done some really stellar things for women But there's now this kind of extremist group of people that are trying to they almost like a liberalism sense They want to rewrite everything they want everything to change and straight away as soon as you said I had a feminist on the podcast People are going to go what's coming next and um, it's annoying like this isn't just in this context Well, someone leaves me labels me. I'm sorry. I'm already veganism 10 15 years ago. I'm like fair play general fair play I love animals too, but the fact that you don't eat them.
I love that then the extreme is coming along Someone goes, oh, I'd be good. I thought oh, you know, I mean so it's it's one of those things where I also appreciate your podcast is really doing well And for some guests that could just be that moment in the limelight They knew that was going to be a clip they knew there would be some controversy and they could then link arms with other extremist feminists But although I think people should 100% remain safe everything should have consent everything each person to their own I mean you can't sit here and go strangling is really bad. Oh, don't David a wine bottle up his ass. What about that?
You know like so it is one of those things I think they should ask women in your comments as well. They're like no Yeah, exactly not like with Louise her stance in particular is an interesting one because she can sit in her self-feminist But on the other side of that she's not the sex positive feminist So she doesn't think that sex work is the same as normal work She doesn't think that only fans should be normalized She doesn't think that the highest calling that women should go for always is their careers and to call yourself a feminist in Most young people circles at the moment would be someone that would be for all of those things Whereas Louise I think would be more of a trad feminist like she'd be accused of being like a trad wife or something even though she writes for the spectator Which is like she writes respect it? No, she doesn't write to the new statesman, which is very much on the left and she also has a organization which helps to prosecute women who have been killed when men use the Excuse of rough sex as a defense So I mean one thing to note about this is that if people decide to comment on a particular clip that's taken from an episode And I say did you watch the full episode because evidently this is a clip which is taken from it? No, I don't need to it's like okay.
Well, I mean you're not you're not taking this particularly seriously So why why should I um I think that one of the points that she makes is quite interesting though Which is that girls on tiktok are showing off rusesas is a badge of honor that they're saying look This is how passionate my love is this is how important he finds my attractiveness That is a very impressionable group of young girls that are being told that this is something that they should strive for And one of the concerns is that almost any guy will do what almost any girl tells him to do to her because guys are terrified about their performance And just want to do it right whatever it is they just want to do it right whereas the reverse isn't necessarily true I mean I would be interested to know how many girls would say yes to choking their male partner if their male partner said I'm absolutely certain it would be fewer and it may be quite a few fewer I just think that It is an important time especially with tiktok and how messed up and how much social anxiety there is and how much vulnerability there is amongst gen z kids I think there's girls that show off self-harm marks on there There's girls that give tips about anorettes and rexie and stuff on there like it seems to me like Fair play for doing successfully on the platform, but for a very young group It seems pretty dangerous. I don't think from the outside looking in it looks like a particularly positive environment to be in if you were a 14 year old guy or girl It's interesting. I'll start on the only fancying something that I've been thinking about quite long and again Starting one up No, maybe I'll book three sales go, but I actually I can understand both sides of the argument where she's saying like look don't sell naked pictures Self on the internet so I can't think and I'm pretty sure people buy it They then own the image or there's something crazy like that could be wrong However, I actually quite like the idea of women being able to perform these paid services without having to be in the room with another man Or being in a strip club with drunk men and or being in a position where they're unsafe They could do it remotely from a room with a camera So I actually quite like the division between the woman and the man I think that's a lot safer and I think that you know if you were to say to a woman you can make $300 a night in a strip club But you've got to you know dance on drunk men or whatever Or you can make a hundred and fifty a day and you could just take pictures and you're under wearing do, you know, whatever for guys I quite like that safety barrier between them Because I though you said people could slice sex work, although I'm not an advocate of it personally It's one of the oldest professions. I think that's ever existed then But I mean just to reject that would you say that that's empowering women?
Like it seems odd to me that female empowerment has gone from Wanting women and men to be treated as equals to encouraging women to get naked for the price of a cheeseburger Like that to me doesn't seem like the peak of female empowerment And neither does telling women that the most important thing that they'll ever do in their lives is their career And I think that the trickle-down effect of that is that one of the easiest ways or one of the potentially easiest ways to either supplement your income or increase your income Is to do something like this on the side as you say it's one of the oldest industries in existence It's probably what the first transactions were made for either sex or food, you know like survival and reproduction It was a spear it was a piece of grain or it was a girl And I'm not convinced that that that is a progressive idea That's not for me to say that girls that would potentially go and do sex work elsewhere in strip clubs Is it safe that yeah absolutely would I prefer a girl to be working on cams instead of walking the streets? Yeah, absolutely My concern is that the frictionlessness and the fact that it's seen as a no Externality no negative externality option for a lot of women to do is that it's lowered the ick floor for a lot of girls to get into an industry Where they're not going to make that much money They are potentially going to lock themselves into being a type of girl Maybe photos get leaked maybe a future employer or boyfriend sees them like Here's a question. Would you be happy getting into a very long-term relationship with a girl who recently quit on the fans or currently still had one? Oh my god, that's such a misogynistic question Like, um, it's interesting because If I was this is a defense like say a lot, I really wouldn't want my future daughter to do it Right, that's that's fine.
That can give me a stance. Can't it as a potential soon? I could be fathering two years or whatever There's another there's another point to that you say about the empowerment I have no idea because you know the empowerment side of things. I have no idea what that's like But there is kind of one other avenue for kind of thinking on this There's a lot of potentially low status men That we talk about maybe utility of deprivation is one of my favorite Jordan Peterson topics Where he talks about you know masturbating giving yourself access to so many women can Negate your actions are imperative to improve the quality of your life If you're wanking every day to pawn or to only fans You're hardly gonna feel g'd up to us to go in the coffee shop if she wants to go for a date But I can only imagine how many sick and twisted fucking men out there are Sperving on women's instagram.
I know she's so fit. Oh, she's so fit. Whatever I quite like the idea sometimes that some of these absolute sickos can actually then access naked pictures of that person And fulfill their fantasies online a long way away Reposed to potential other things that they might do stalking that person becoming Finatically obsessed with this person or whatever those things are so in my recent thinking recently I was like I hope I don't know. I hope that this market is catering to some sick men One of the problems one of the problems you have is there's been a bunch of only fans models that have been killed by fans that they've had So I would say that the degree of separation that you have on instagram Which is evidently not for you you feel absolutely no obligation or sense of ownership or sense of contribution or intimacy with that person Anybody that's got 10 bucks can become one of like have the virtual boyfriend service or whatever That's not the same with the following nobody expects that with the following instagram I think that you're actually From a psychological perspective for men.
I think you're leaning them further into a dangerous arena as opposed to taking them away from it That's actually a very valid point which I hadn't thought about these are all just thinking is my mind Sometimes I'll be like I'll be walking somewhere my mind will just drift off and I'll try and break down things like this That's another valid point because those kind of interactions are usually exclusively only to people in relationships And when you're financially incentivized and sometimes financially propped up by the income that you get from this group of men You can become subservient to them and then if you discontinue that subservient nature It could be met with animosity a lot of adventure I think that it's a really delicate one because the psychology of of you know men like that Jordan Peterson click where he goes a man can expose himself to more naked Women in an hour than previously a man would ever have seen in my lifetime and the psychological implications of that are profound and Probably not fully, you know appreciated or studied or understood Well, there was an interesting point in a podcast with Andrew Huberman recently where he said that Men specifically who train themselves to get aroused by watching other people have sex May not have the arousal response carry over when it comes to being in reality with a normal person So you could neurologically train yourself to become a voyeur in a way If that's what you get used to if you condition yourself to become aroused by watching other people and you then get one-on-one That might not work It may not work as opposed to so you have increases in erectile dysfunction amongst men a lot of the time because they've desensitized themselves They've done regulated their arousal response so much by watching ever increasingly extreme or exciting porn and then reality just can't compete You know, that's actually such an interesting topic. I know we're talking about so much porn now Um, what's it called when men like to watch someone else sleep with their wife? So it would be cocole porn. I think tachos Cocole so I've always wondered how someone ends up in that position and you might have just opened a counter worms there Where like you say if you're a third party watching other people have sex and you are in love with your wife and you want the best thing for her Then the cocole experience may come from that and again There's that genre point the POV point of view to maybe try and negate that but one thing that I'm genuinely can look at yeah concerned about All right, and this is nothing the metaverse right?
I never gave it like it real much thought but I digest things over and over and we both have a mutual friend Luke He went to a red ball experience where they go to six festivals in half an hour wearing an oculus And they sat down but in the metaverse they get handed a drink which is actually made in front of them But as they drink the drink the oculus notes that they look up when they look down there another festival And I was like wow that's that's pretty fucking amazing And then I saw a story about a guy who watches movies in the metaverse because you can watch a movie in an oculus But he actually watches it from a penthouse apartment in bed in Las Vegas where that's not where he lives But in his oculus he is so he's like why would I not wear this? I'm in a shitty fucking one bed in the middle of america when I can put this on and be in a penthouse in vegas And then I was thinking about let's say we get neurolink Right in the next few years we could tap into you know telling our body something Why would you risk stds pregnancy all of these things when you can have a virtual experience of having sex and people are going to be very quick To scoff at that but I was thinking to myself the other day. Okay, let's say in three years time I can put on an oculus and see my favorite DJ play at glastonbury and instead of paying the money driving to glastonbury parking camping queuing for toilets Being stuck in massive crowds. I do get in trampoline losing foam reception like festivals You give up a lot to have a good time imagine me and three of my friends can sit on the sofa watch bicep play put an oculus on It feels like we're in the crowd, but whenever we want to go for a toilet we can just take that cos I'll go use our toilet The house, you know if we want it to take some dma we can do it imagine as you turn the oculus I can see my friend.
I can even virtually high-five him I was just joking about that as I was saying I was like that sounds pretty fucking appealing Going to the pub with your mates Why would we pay for for real beer when we can buy a pack and have it at home and we can have a virtual You know banter like pointing at your mates and you know We're soon very slippery on the slopes of everyone goes. Yeah, but I love leaving the house But would you if there was a better alternative without having to have you ever seen the Bruce Willis film surrogates? Remember that one yes I've seen it. I'm trying to think I keep getting mixed up with the jumper one No, not that so it's basically what you're talking about So in the future people have surrogate to their these sort of avatar perfect versions of them and you buy your grades for your Sorry, but then it walks around in the real world and you just sit in your apartment in a leather chair Basically, I'm locked in and controlling it in one way or another and then Bruce decides he wants to do something different Dude, I really I'm pretty concerned I think about that I mean I get comments sometimes on the more black-pilly Conversations that have come up on this channel from guys who have evidently lost hope that the future's going to be better for them in terms of dating And saying don't worry boys.
Just hold on the sex robots are coming. That's not ironic They're not saying that in an ironic way They're saying right now I feel like I'm so invisible to the other sex that all I'm the only piece of hope that I have is technology coming in and saving me from the current world Like that's a terrifying situation to think that we've managed to get a super affluent super comfortable society too That that's the pinnacle that most guys or many guys should I say not most at all but a significant minority of guys think is there out Yeah, I've spoken about this quite a lot in my most recent book Which I've got credit you for I've talked about in a second some of the parts of the book that quite literally from our conversation But there's two kind of things here one the pandemic really fucking slingshotted people into the online dating world because they physically would break The law to go on a physical date the organic meets that you know meeting somebody in a coffee shop Somebody at your local gym whatever it is all those were taken away so people went to online pretty aggressively And it's fear of rejection, you know now you don't have to get rejected You know before you'd have to interview for 10 jobs now your CV gets rejected on LinkedIn before you even get there But the world is becoming more and more comfortable. We don't have to have awkward conversations anymore So you have that there's also a phenomenon which I write about called declinism where people have a tendency to think things are getting worse You know and again Jordan Peterson was in a debate a good few years ago where someone's talking about climate change this There's what's your thing on this and he goes do you think you have an easier life than your grandparents? And the woman wouldn't answer it, you know, they ever so caught up about how bad things are that he was like you're gonna have a you know Better life.
Yeah, you know let me give you some of them on so there's a concept called the tokmill paradox So as the living standards in a society rise people's expectations rise along with them But obviously your expectations are able to move much more quickly than reality can So after a while most of the low-hanging fruit reality can deliver to you in terms of convenience and confidence and such like that They start to level off. However, your expectations continue to go up So what you end up with is a delta between where you see life being and what you thought life was supposed to be That's the top goal paradox the fact that as living standards rise so do expectations and then expectations overtake the reality And that causes people to be dissatisfied. I think that's very close to the concept of that And people seem to think you know, I think that a lot of people even think about having children You know, we've got a population crisis nearing around the corner you got a fantastic interview with Jordan Peterson about that 50 years in the United States has been since people have been producing enough kids to have younger generations So not only are we going to that I think there is a bit of in the subconscious people going Why would I want to bring a child into this world? But there's a book called factfulness Hasbro's Thank for that and that was pre pandemic that I read that was still so much of that rings true There's one part in the book where he's like four million babies will die before their first birthday And you're like oh terrible down from 12 million The way the media like portray everything you do for like the world's game was but the world is getting better And I do like to remind people of that right is tragic the decline is having such a profound impact on people's thinking where they They do suddenly like pessimism bias loss aversion We're all genetically programmed to negative outcomes and we have that with the future as well Which is which is tragic.
I whenever I get like a deep conversation about this my friends. I'm like guys Elon will save us Elon will save us not fucking buying Twitter anymore. He's about to be sued by Twitter Do you see that he's just been the lawsuits just been unveiled about him? What else can they do because in essence he's lifted the skirt on some bullshit that's been going on with Twitter He's aired the laundry for the world to see and I think it's fucking brilliant and you know There's so much skullduggery that's been going on in the social media space and there's so much of even Twitter's code definitely got reversed during that process When I Joe Rogan and all these people got hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of followers overnight where they've obviously been shadow-belling people the political leaning stuff You know and it's very hard to ignore the fact that many of these social media platforms are switched forwards to political leanings and narratives And made you know when I went home to spend some time my parents recently I've realized that my parents spent a lot of the time in the pandemic locked in lockdown and it has changed them And all they had was each other the news the newspaper And I've now realized that my parents cannot have a debate or discussion anymore because they are so set It's almost like the fabric of your stance sets in stone after about two years So my mom and dad really don't like Elon Musk and I was like I'm trying to figure out why my dad was like Oh, you know, it doesn't pay enough tax only these things and then I was like, right Let's see if I can have like a genuine discussion I was like the atrocities going on in in Ukraine terrible.
Okay. I said to my dad because for 30 years I've gone to my dad for dad. What's communism dad? Why is this happening dad?
What what does social estate mean? And I said dad why is Putin invading Ukraine and he's like because he's evil and I was like I think there's there's some bigger reasons to that and I was like what about NATO? My dad's like now. He's just evil and I was like I think that's a narrative that's been painted online I couldn't get anything else out of them.
I had another discussion recently where there was a Someone on Lex Friedman's podcast who was talking about how the Nazis were the first to stop pregnant women from having x-rays And the Nazis were some of the first people to stop their nation smoking 30 years after the Nazi stops their nation smoking America publicly said this is probably what the 60s I think or 70s if we found out that smoking hindered people's health would make it illegal And when I said that once I said, oh, did you know the Nazis were actually the forefront of health of their own people? People go how the fuck can you can you sit there and say that? I'm not supporting anything they've done and suddenly I was getting abuse from someone for bringing up the facts that the Nazis were a little bit further ahead in that medical Field and I was like wow I actually think in recent years We've moved away from the ability to even have discussions on so many topics anymore and especially with things like Twitter and all of these things Have you found that it would short form especially people that maybe You and I right now podcasting. It's a channel that's not governed by media by the big media or there is a source of media I feel like these are some of the only genuine conversations that can be had I feel like podcasts and other back channels where you can actually say and talk about things I would agree.
I think one of the main Common denominator between all of the situations you've spoken about there is that people have attached their sense of self-worth and or identity To a position that they hold that if they were to let go of their position It would be the same as destruction So Eckhart Tolley talks about this the fact that when you're having a discussion with people a lot of the times the reason that they don't want to admit that They're wrong is it's tantamount to ego destruction Right that this would feel like the complete removal of everything that I am because if I'm wrong about that what else might I'd be wrong about And there are certain people out there that are more curious than others and they will be the ones that will be able to continue to update their software And the programming as new information comes in personally for me. I spent almost all of my time especially now in Austin It's a very open Philosophically open city I spend almost all of my time having conversations that I don't know the answer to and asking other smart people if they've got an answer to it So for me, I haven't really noticed that but certainly online comments are reactionary they're short they take the worst possible implication of what someone's words could mean and and that just doesn't seem like For the people that decide to do it very quickly they're going to realize that it's not an effective way to exist now That's going to mean that they're miserable. They're going to be their negative advice is going to be even worse. So yeah, I mean I choose to not ever associate myself with those people I want to have conversations about stuff as freely as I can now one of the things I have started to realize is that there's a limit to what I can even talk about on podcasts there are conversations that I Sometimes refrain from having or at least I have to force myself to have with friends because most of the conversations that I have are on Podcasts and that means that when I want to really push the boundaries of something that's different or interesting or like can we talk about Whatever topic that would be completely unacceptable even on something like YouTube.
That's something that I've conditioned myself into so when you think about if most of your conversations were you in the media I'm aware it's like a one-way conversation But if most of your conversations were between you and the Guardian or the BBC or CNN or Fox News or whatever That is going to become your sense of identity. I've internalized one as well It's just that my internalization is like guardrails on what I can speak about somebody else is at the guardrails I've been set on them by a media organization Yes, interesting I think that one of the most worrisome things that I see is the disintegration of ignorance where ignorance is not painted in such a bad Light where even when we spoke about that only fancy before I especially my point of view and you're like well Actually, this is what's happening and then I'm like, oh, I'm actually wrong on that point Which is fantastic because you know, I appreciate that and the same thing with like, you know Trying to have a discussion with my dad why is Putin doing that and I think that it's annoying that someone could go well Actually this this this happened. You shouldn't even be questioned I've ignorance about the whole situation there But the thing is you can't really easily find out what's going on You know if I were to ask the majority of the people in the UK, why is this happening? They struggle to give you an answer on it.
I feel that you know what this is crazy, right? I've become more concerned with history as I'm getting older and people used to tell me history was such an amazing subject I'm medicine through time get out of here, but now I'm getting a little bit older. I spend a lot of time on YouTube I went down to North Korea rabbit all the other day. I work and I watched about five hours a documentary about North Korea Why?
Fascination we just get told like are they evil which I agree with but I didn't really understand what was going on there You know, we've chosen had Park in your own me part and I was listening to that was multiplied I was like the whole world needs to know about this we should have been taught this in secondary school I was learning about medicine through time and you know, like in America I would really like became fascinated about all these things and it as time goes on It's one of those things you get you get concerned about why we learning the things we're learning What we learning about what's happening in so much of history does repeat itself And I think it's absolutely bonkers that we don't have like better narratives on that at the moment So there's a concept called fire housing which I learned from a friend Gwynda Bogle He said with so many competing narratives in the digital age disinformation agents can't convince you of any single narrative So instead they overwhelm you with many contradictory narratives and still you start to doubt everything and become confused demoralized and passive So the point there is that it is significantly easier to confuse and demoralize people than it is to convince them of anything and Firehosing involves throwing all of the information at you until you can't work out what's true anymore. I think that's what you're seeing This sounds almost like he's like on it Yes, I'm listening to some beers, you know, I never let good advice for one deaf ears I put that in both my books so far So the zygonic effects which you told me about about waiters remembering open bills and forgetting about them when they close You started then telling me about the implications that could help to our psyche and writing about it really expanded that Well, I've actually experienced this first time like when you see someone or someone very attractive and everything You go, oh my god, I find some retrats. I'd love to ask for their number. You're on the tube I might be someone, you know, I remember doing a qualification once and it was a five-day course and the first day I've really found the scale attractive.
It was the last 10 minutes on the last day I was like 19 that I asked her. Oh, can I have your number she goes? I thought you never asked I mean to come on some like amazing days was like incredible I think about to stay if I hadn't have asked how long would I've thought about that? What are the mental implications?
I'm not doing things, you know that job that you saw in LinkedIn that you didn't apply for now You're following the guy that's in the role and he's loving his life Just got a big bonus like all of these things take up mental taxes and I keep thinking about loops TV adverts Oh after the break We've got seven ways to kill zombies in apocalypse. Oh my god The the loops been open shut loops and I've really coined that into like a bit of a motivator in Hard to be confident but like there was out the pyrric victories as well Which you spoke about like a dog leaping off a cliff to bite a bird for dinner. Yeah, it's an answer to defeat Yeah, how many how many things are truly pyrric in daily life that scares? Very few I think like most of the time what people are doing is they're slowly Chewing away, they're eating away at their own sense of sovereignty with stuff like that I think I spoke to you about the anxiety cost as well right like the Amount of mental effort that it takes to consider something that you could get rid of by simply doing the thing All of the stuff that you leave under all of the loops all of the Uncompleted tasks all of pretty much everything that you decide isn't yet finished that you could have just done right now If you were to have just done it right now, that would have been sorted Yes, it's one of those things where yeah, I bet those out recording the audio book at the moment So I'm back in the studio and about how you finished it bloody happy printed on Friday doing the audio book It takes I read for about three hours a day for five days and it is pretty heavy But then you it's your book so some chapters I wrote more recently than others But sometimes you don't realize how long the sentence is so you have to go through then you have sense then you have words that you've potentially misinterpreted then Breathing is difficult as well because you've got to learn how to breathe properly and when to breathe and some sentences You might have to do 15 words before comma so you have to take mini breaths in between it's a bit of an art form recording an audio book I would agree there are credit to Douglas Murray his book is War on the West is about eleven twelve hours Incredible help and I might be doing a podcast with Doug's Murray in the next few months his voice I love it right exactly wait.
He's got this this posh yeah authoritative voice that and he's like Well, that's very interesting I think but when I saw that's what my book's probably six seven hours I thought wow that is some stint of recording an audio book It took him an entire week as well But I think he does it in he does it in morning and after noon since it was happening He was recording it as I was in New York with him so I left in that first day after I left He was going something that I saw an episode of Seth Stevens dividuates who is a data scientist and it links What you're talking about earlier on about comfort? He says we sometimes mistake a comfortable activity for an enjoyable activity and this rounds up something I've been thinking about for probably about three years Which is that a lot of the time when you consider how future you would have wanted you to spend your time right now It involves doing something enjoyable but current you wants you to do something which is comfortable So it would be the difference between going out to a salsa class for the first time ever Which might be shit, but might be absolutely brilliant and even if it is shit You're gonna remember it a lot more than you are yet another night watching the terminal list on Amazon Prime or whatever But because we optimized for comfort in the moment and we presume that comfort in the moment will be enjoyment in the long term you often end up selecting for comfort and ease and convenience and over a long period of time that ends up with just a pretty dissatisfaction Factory life and that's kind of the same as what you're talking about in terms of you need to have something which will motivate yourself Like what is the little thing that you rely on that when you think about it look I probably just need to go and do this thing because it's going to be quicker for me to work out whether or not I should have done it by doing it Then it is for me to just think about it all the time and obsess Yeah, I think that you can measure your growth by measuring your discomfort So right now and I put this in the book as well How many things this week truly make you uncomfortable? How many things this week truly make you a bit nervous and put your own edge if there's a considerable amount you're probably in a growth phase And if there's nothing you're probably in a stagnation phase and I'm quick to Spot these the last few weeks was like oh speed to be back on stream your life skip So I was like fuck I'm gonna compete in Jiu-Jitsu this weekend on Sunday So on Sunday, I'm gonna drive an hour and a half away to fight other men in my division of my weight level Why because quite frankly it scares the shit out of me training is comfortable and it's not even the fight that I'm scared of it's the expectations and we try to do it and that that Leading up to doing I'm enjoyable finishing whether I win or lose in hindsight. It's amazing like winning is great But losing I love to remind myself how amazing it is to lose because there's no better reality check or dose of inspiration that you can get Then having your ego realigned to reality and I think that's such a rewarding thing and I let's even say this Say you reach out for a podcast.
Yes You think it's probably a few echelons above where you're currently at and they reject you That's one the best things that can happen because if you've made it this far That's just gonna put fire in your belly and you're gonna go okay I'm a grow this motherfucker until the point you're not gonna my daughter come do this and I think people have also not only Do they avoid uncomfortable situations? They can't quite see the potential upside of putting themselves in it and even better yet They're so fearful of losing when that could be the key thing loosely Lord my friend She says the lessons you need during the tasks you're avoiding That's very nice. Yeah, I've got it from someone else, but that's right. I give it to Lucy.
It's okay Yeah, that's that's lovely man. I don't disagree I think that most people understand the places that they're hiding away from themselves and you're quite right It's the things that you don't want to look at the things that you don't want to do and those are the identifiers What else what else about the new book you excited for? We'll probably have another conversation I'm sure once it's out, but is there anything else that you're super excited about it? Like it's people think it's about about confidence like I'm like hey, my name's James I'm so confident let me teach you how I've done it and Weirdly my life is something that I look back on I'm quite proud of a younger person me because he wasn't as intelligent He just happened to make the right decisions.
I look back now and I'm thinking fucking oh you did all right there You did all right there But I've come to realize that confidence isn't so much about success It's about failure and it's about how you deal and how you how you react to failure And I think that people they see the spectrum from the wrong end They see it the success end or your confidence pressure successful on my wrong actually confident because losing doesn't face me Things going wrong doesn't face me. Why? Because that's not the metric that you should be setting for success Imagine this and this is getting something written in the book. Why does something going right have to be successful?
Why can't you trying to do something be successful? You know let's say that I love using the setting of dating where people are so worried to ask for someone's number and for it to go wrong But if you were to break that down into like a three-minute segment the second you have put yourself into that position asked before They even have the chance to compute a response You could win that's your win and if people realize that even if just sending their CV to someone a potential employer that can be your win It doesn't have to be getting the job and if you can set these again I've been doing this before weight loss for years I want to lose 10 pounds I'm not how about losing one pound and making that win and if people can get better at what their wins look like and where they're Setting the objectives and how that failure you're only gonna ever add strings to your bow by failing and People can get that and then head it's more about a book about dealing with failure than it is a book about being confident And if you were to think of the most confident person in your mind the most confident person you've ever met when something goes wrong How much they take it to heart? And it's going and it's that kind of mindset when people get into it's not easy But it's certainly worth it if people personally with it enough one of my favorite bits from the live tour that I went to go And see you do the most recent one in Newcastle was how you were explaining to people if they don't enjoy their job That you're basically risking nothing to then move on to go and do something else Can you just go through that? So first I like to remind people that so many of them are doing really well in a job They don't enjoy and that that's just the fact most people in recruitment right there Probably very few amount of people in recruitment actually enjoy it.
I've done it myself, but they're good at it And you know, I've always wanted to have my own job at my own business, but you know, I just don't know I can't afford for things not to go right. I've got kids, you know, I just got a mortgage on a house And I'm like cool, okay, but here's something to consider You're doing very well in a job you're not passionate about So if you're selling people to jobs you're not interested in Do you have the capabilities to sell something you actually give a fuck about? Probably Now, what if that doesn't work out? You probably go back to a job in recruitment.
You're exactly where you started And I think that people when they really understand if they're dominating something they don't like The potential they have for dominating something they do like is massive And again, I'm pretty sure it's a statistic where people say when they ask people on their deathbed The thing they regret the most is the things they didn't do not the things that didn't work out And I wish people could have more conversations with old people The old people like me, I went for it. It was the worst decision ever They were talking about things they didn't do and I think that it's really important The people appreciate that your work life is such a big constituent of your overall life And it gives you purpose. It gives you meaning. It is a pillar of your mental health It's so so important and it kind of kills me that people don't see the implications that has to the rest of their lives Because if you don't enjoy your work life that is going to affect your relationships It's going to affect your training.
It's going to affect your diet Because we need to remember like in sims playing it back in the day You got those little plus and minus interactions You want to be getting pluses from work, pluses from your partner And you don't want anything like to be giving you those negative interactions because it will take its toll Yeah, man. I mean, where you live, what you do and who you do it with are the three most important choices I think that you can make. It's a very British phenomenon I think most of the American people that I've spoken to and again This could be a selection effect from being an Austin which is full of cultural refugees from elsewhere So there are already people that are predisposed to travel But still I would say that the UK seems to have a disproportionate number of people who are scared to take risks like that I don't think that there is a healthy number of role models that go and move to Australia Or start the run business or drop a job or change something in their life that they know isn't working In America, you've got the American dream, right? There's nothing like that in the UK.
The UK is just a blueprint and it's a blueprint to get by I think that you know, I'm not sure about enough of the history of the UK But people for the large part have probably just been struggling to survive to get by There's not been a dream If you're or if you go to the UK, it's like, okay, go to school Go to college, go to uni, get a job, hold it down, get a mortgage, have enough money to retire And what I could be completely wrong with this, I could be naive I hate it when people talk about their 50s and 60s Do this now for 50s and 60s I appreciate there's a lot of sentiment to that But now it's very important too 20s to 30s are very important, not 50s and 60s They're important for now Your 30s to 40s are very important, not for 60s and 70s, but for now There's no point not making the most out now for a bit later You know, there are so many people that here eject on life because they were too long sighted with that And I think that I wish that there could be a better culture in the UK to be like, hey Do what you want As long as you can pay bills, you don't get into it As long as you don't cripple or lean on the fucking healthcare system, the financial system or bankrupt yourself Then do whatever the fuck you want And ultimately I think that people do need the rules of life to be rewritten Where it's more about Wake up, do shit you enjoy, come home, spend it with someone you enjoy Go to sleep, get eight and a half hours to do it again Rather than it being like this kind of rat race And London feels almost poisonous to me a little bit I don't really like the vibe of London And some of my friends are actually crazy for saying that People are like, I just like it better I feel more relaxed here, swimming the sea mower I really want to get a dog and just give it a good life here In London I see so many people just working so hard But I don't see the happiness that should come with that I think the UK is characterized by people who are desperate to not lose Rather than desperate to win No one cares about winning, all they're bothered about is not losing And that causes a very particular uncomfortable scarcity mindset That is very hard to get rid of Yeah 100% And I mean if anyone in the UK is listening to this They'll sort of these two, you know, you're fucked off abroad and you're living your life If you're happy and you're listening to this, I'm fucking you've completed it Well done, you've scored the highest score It's just there'll be some young people listening to this And they're like, I don't know what to do, I've just inherited some money Or I've got a bit of savings, I don't know what to Surely better to go around the world, experience different cultures Because everyone in my family loves where they live My sister lives about five minutes away from my parents My parents live within the same 300 metres that they were born They all went to the same primary schools There was no reason ever for me to not want to live there And all it took was for me to just go on a bit of a whim I just had this urge to go to Australia out of three one way And I got here and I was prepared to be completely wrong I still have no And I just wish that if anybody from the UK is listening to this Just go try out somewhere different Even if it means working a job, I actually did a TV piece with an Irish lady And I think she was working for the BBC And I was talking to her, she was out in New York And what did you do? She goes, I just worked on a bar in an Irish bar in New York And she's not working for the BBC And she's not really enjoying her job that much She goes, it was the best time of my life working in the Irish bar So why did you believe she goes, my parents pressured me to come home and get a proper job And I was like, I felt kind of felt for them I was like, you did something to impress someone else You did what the status quo said you should have done And because of it, in an interview that should have been about my first book When I was talking about you not enjoying your life as much as you did before James Smith, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up to date with what you've got going on, where should they go? TikTok, I'm joking When you bring it Yeah, online James Smith PT Anyway, they put it, I'm hoping for a rebrand in a few years But I can just get the name at James Smith, that'd be amazing Who's got it at the moment? I'm like, a PT You're kidding me No What is something?
Mate, I would love to There was one point where he tried opening a business called the Academy And I said I'm an email, I said I'm an email, I said I'm a good on you But hopefully because that one day I am a PT That is the way I've come up and if I do experience any more notable success in the future I will always say that I'm a PT I've been told by many people to tell people I'm an author Because whenever I bump into a business class, what'd you do? I'm an on-person trainer They're like, alright I think I'm some trust monkey or something But yeah, that'll be good Anyway, they type in the name, they should find me They might find a vocal singer called James Smith as well Just look for the more handsome one, and you'll find me Appreciate you James, cheers mate Cheers mate, thanks